Chapter 8 – Sarcophagum

January 4th, 2552 - (12:55 Hours - Military Calendar)

Daedalus system, Ballast

Vallejo Station

:********:

Duncan was sure the job was done. Or he was until two minutes ago.

Epsilon was currently tagging along with 4th Platoon through the bowels of Vallejo station. They were on their way to Hanger A-02. It was a brisk walk through the passageways, but not as quick as it could be. UNSC personnel were still about, loud chats and hardy applause still ringing out for a battle that was won. The entire thing was surreal to Duncan for a different reason. As those making way for them to pass were busy celebrating their newest victory, Epsilon and 4th Platoon were heading into another battle.

It was an engagement that no one else on the station knew about, or could be allowed to know, except for the pair of ODST platoons that their higherups had agreed to deploy. And Epsilon of course for good measure.

There was some secret involved here and Duncan could sense it was big. For starters, just minutes after they learned of the victory in space, Baelson comm'd in to the troopers on an isolated comm frequency, telling them they had another mission. This one would take them back groundside. He said nothing else beyond that except that when Rico asked what they were going after, the 2nd Lieutenant told him: "Eagle-Echo-Charlie-4-1".

The answer sent a shiver down everyone's spines. Even Zack went quiet after hearing it.

Eagle-Echo-Charlie-4-1 was code for a mission's classification level. When run through the basic cyphers, it meant 'Extreme Emergency Classification: Level 4'. The '4' meant that an important but classified military installation or asset was in immediate danger of falling into enemy hands. The '1' at the end was an indication that it was a developing situation. It was extreme because it was the kind of order that, in the UNSC, translated from officer to grunt as 'shut up and follow me'. A top-secret gag order.

There was no further debate. Epsilon silently disengaged from the larger festivities to continue what was turning out to be a very long day.

After a quick trip to the armory for some much-needed munitions, where Duncan made sure to trade in his DMR for a decent MA5C, they jogged back out into the corridors.

As they were passing the starboard-side docking umbilicals, he got a visual through a window on a frigate that had just arrived. It was a standard Stalwart class judging by the size. A key feature unique to itself was the molten etchings that had been carved through different parts of the hull, probably thanks to pulse lasers. The wounds were still aglow in some places. On the forward section, the lasers had knifed cleanly through the 'FFG-181' written there. As if the hull classification symbol wasn't ruined enough on its own, the ship's name which was printed closer to the midsection was diced up and down, like the bad handwriting of a toddler. Amidst the glow of the damage, he could barely make out the white lettering: 'Stalwart Dawn'.

The ship had sustained serious damage during the battle, though not as much as other frigates and destroyers he saw that were docked for maintenance at several of the other stations. Those were the ones whose hulls were scored bad enough for the impact sites of the plasma torpedoes to be visible even from hundreds of kilometers away. There was the glowing flesh of their surfaces, the partially exposed skeletons of damaged inner decks and the hemorrhaging of pressurized atmosphere, creating cosmic clouds of vented oxygen around them. Some had definitely gotten off better than others. Compared to the distant debris of those ships that hadn't made it, even the most worse off had something to be thankful for if they were still serviceably intact.

As the corridor led them closer to the ship, Duncan spotted Navy Engineers moving around its exterior. Close to two dozen of them were dressed in specialized EVA suits that enabled them to operate in hard vacuum as they in turn operated on the Stalwart Dawn. They floated, crawled and leaped along its surface, having tethered themselves to service rails on the hull. They generally gravitated towards the most severely affected areas. They maneuvered their way into them like maggots into a wound. With back-mounted arc welders ready and polysulfide sealants in hand, they began the work of closing the breaches. It would be a temporary fix. The best they could do was keep the ships glued together until they reached a drydock for full repairs. Ahead of the necessary maintenance trips, the lights sparking across the dozen or so docked ships was evidence that they were being stabilized for the journey back.

Or for any counterattacks.

That possibility, he imagined, would be on everyone's mind soon, if it wasn't already.

They jogged on past the windows as well as the mouth of the long corridor leading down one of the umbilicals. But Duncan made the mistake of looking down its length.

The very act of turning his head brought with it an almost overpowering odor. At first, he thought it was charcoal. Then he spotted the body bags. They were everywhere. Too many for him to count in the quick glimpse he had. They were lined up to either side of the corridor like opposing pieces on a chessboard. A team of white-shirted medical orderlies were carrying out several more before he passed the sight.

He turned away and kept moving. But the smell followed him. Charcoal. It stuck around in his helmet filters, wafted into his nostrils and triggered a rising sensation in his throat. Soon he couldn't take it. He spotted a disposal bin and broke from the line. Stopping in front of it, he yanked off his helmet, grabbed the rim with both hands and brought up his breakfast. A few deep wretches were all it took to get everything out. Once the deed was done, he found his strength mostly gone and his head woozy, forcing him to lean on the bin. He spat into it in the hopes of getting the acidic taste out of his mouth, but to no avail.

A hand patted him on the shoulder. "You shouldn't have looked."

It was Nova.

Following a handful of trembling breaths, he willed himself to stand straighter. "My mistake."

"Come on, let's go."

Already the others were getting far ahead of them. Duncan wiped his armored arm across his mouth. Nova offered him his helmet back. He slipped it on and fell in behind her.

The ODSTs were rounding the entrance to the station's main atrium when Duncan glimpsed the interior. Rather than an overpowering odor of the dead, he was greeted with the grateful sight of the living. The station's hundreds of construction crew were free of their restraints which they left unoccupied on the walls. They meanwhile gathered about into the middle of the floor between the small islands of decorative flora. They were talking, cheering. The whole scene had the air of a banquet hall with the cause for ceremony being that they'd survived. He singled out Martin in the middle of the crowd. He was sure he saw him clinking a glass of red wine with a couple coworkers before Duncan slipped past the entrance.

He smiled. The memory of the old charcoal smell faded.

The troopers carried on down the last set of corridors, taking a left then two rights followed by a reinforced bulkhead door that slid open at their arrival. Hanger A-02 lay on the other side. Its glassy, trapezoidal exit doors were sealed shut. Beyond them was a clear view of the closest ODP, Anaheim station. Further out were the frames of the surviving frigates and destroyers that had returned to smaller, three-ship strong wolfpack formations. They were scouring different sectors of the far reaches of local space, patrolling for any sign of the enemy's possible return.

Waiting for the ODSTs were five Pelican dropships. The Pelicans were held up to the hanger's ceiling by pairs of docking limbs that clamped their fuselages firmly into place. The ramps to their open bays readily lay on the deck of the upper platform that the ODSTs walked out onto. On the opposite side of the space, the doors there opened as well and the troopers from Bravo's 2nd Platoon came through.

Standing in between the two parties, out in front of the middlemost Pelican, was Colonel Garrison. He was fully decked out in his BDU. He otherwise carried no arms except the helmet that he kept in the crux of his arm. He watched the two parties as they came down the walkways to assemble in front of him. Garrison tested them with his gaze for several seconds. At the end, he breathed out a long exhalation.

"Gentlemen, ladies, I'm sorry to break this to you but this fight's not over." He said. "For everyone else on this station maybe but not for you. I can't get into any details here. As you've probably heard, it's an Eagle-Echo-Charlie-4-1 scenario. Our lips have to stay sealed until we get you underway." He nodded to Baelson. "I'll be placing the 2nd Lieutenant here in charge. After I brief you, I'll let him take over for the mission. You're geared up and ready to go. Now get moving and make sure you make it back so you can enjoy today's win. It's a rarity and I want everyone here to make it last, you copy?"

The group replied in disciplined unison. "We copy, sir."

Garrison pointed to the Pelicans on the left. "Alright, 2-Actual, 2nd Platoon, those are your rides." He pointed to the Pelicans on the right. "Baelson, 4th Platoon, those are yours." He nodded to the dropship at his back. "Epsilon, this is you here."

The ODSTs saluted then broke off without much of a word, 2nd Platoon going left and 4th Platoon right. Epsilon drained past the colonel and straight into the hanger of the central dropship. Duncan settled down onto one of the rear seats. He saddled his rifle on his lap and watched as the Staff shook hands with the colonel.

"We'll get it done, sir." The Staff said.

"I know you will." Garrison assured. "I'll see you when you get back."

The Staff strode inside and took the opposite seat in front of Duncan. The colonel nodded off to them before turning and heading down the walkway. Soon the reinforcement door to the exit corridor slid shut behind him, and a second later, so did the door to the Pelican's hanger.

The lights in Hanger A-02 flicked off, changing to a scintillating red. An automated female's voice spoke over the intercom. "Air decompression for A-02 beginning in T-minus 5...4...3...2...1..."

There was a hiss of air on the other side of the door's viewport. The decompression was gradual. A full minute passed before the last of the oxygen was evacuated from the hanger. The voice spoke again. "Hanger A-02 doors 1 through 5 opening in T-minus 5...4...3...2...1."

Duncan felt the dropship rumble from the movement of the opening doors. The sensation changed to the dull whine of the Pelicans' fusion drives which warmed up into a high-pitched scream. The whole thing shook as the docking limbs released them. The world outside the viewport brightened, then it shrunk away along with Vallejo station as the Pelicans raced out into Ballast' exosphere.

:********:

Clutching his datapad close to his chest, Dr. Marcus Strawson looked left then right.

Either way he looked it was the same thing; pitch-black nothingness.

He pressed his back against the cold metal of the wall behind him. The best he could do was stretch out his legs and close his eyes in a vain attempt to hold back the claustrophobic darkness that threatened to suffocate his sanity. Without much in the way of light, he was mostly forced to rely on other senses like touch. He occasionally ran his hand over the floor or the wall at his back, sometimes feeling the small but frequent changes in its texture. There were minor circles and spirals, connected triangles and interlocking rectangles along with other geometric shapes that he could trace with his fingertips. He did it so often to one spot that he was beginning to better visualize what the thing in question actually looked like.

It was a symbol.

A hieroglyph of some sort, one of many.

It was written there on the surface. It was meant to convey a meaning, perhaps of a subject or location like the one he was in now. It had to have been put there by someone. Yet the most important question his frazzled mind gravitated towards was this: It was there, he could feel it, so why couldn't he see it?

He tried again, hoping the illusion was a one-off happenstance. He turned his datapad back on and swung the screen around. The wall was bathed in light. The surface was a smooth, dark-silver metal. Featureless. By the way the light reflected off of it, there was a brief optical illusion of seeing his own face in watery clarity. His mind had to compensate for the reflectivity in order to come back to the understanding that it wasn't water at all, but a solid wall.

He had held his hand against the spot where he knew he'd felt the symbol. He slowly raised his hand and brought the pad in front of it.

There was nothing there.

Nothing but a spot of light where the focus of the device's camera was directed. The reflection of his face stared back at him. A square face, soft features of an often office-bound academic, disheveled brown hair held together by tilted glasses and an exhausted expression. There was no sign of much else. He slowly pulled the pad to the left while running his hand behind the light. Doing so allowed him to feel the symbols again. He suddenly stopped his hand over a particularly large symbol.

He winced. It was because he recognized it by the familiar feel of its pattern. He'd felt it before, albeit in a different spot while feeling nothing like it on this part of the wall.

Had the symbol...moved?

He whipped the pad right over it to get the light in place. He slowly pulled his hand down.

Nothing.

And yet he could still reach back up and feel that it was there.

Still nothing.

He closed his eyes and let out a sigh. He turned around, lay back on the wall and accepted that he might be losing his mind. And much faster than he expected.

He'd only been down here for a few hours and already the darkness was taking its toll. He brought his pad out in front of him and maneuvered into the recording suite. His thumb hovered over the red circle of the 'record' button.

Bang

The noise echoed down from a place higher up. He felt the vibration rattle dust loose on his head. The silence took a minute to return. He remained as motionless as a corpse all the while.

He knew what made the noise. He needed to stay quiet, less it should find him here. Once it did, his life would be measured in seconds, not the hours that it seemed to be reduced to of late.

He breathed in deep to hold back the fears and frustrations clawing at his throat from the day's events. When he was sure he could talk, he pressed the record button.

"This is Dr. Strawson to...whoever finds this. Today is January 4th, 2552 and this will likely be the final commissioned report from me, one of the last surviving members of Project Black Sea." He swallowed the nervous lump in his throat and prayed to God that ONI's top brass wouldn't crucify him for what he was about to say. That was of course if someone else didn't beat them to it. Or something.

Another distant Bang resonated through the dark.

"This is a full report so I won't be leaving anything out. Anything. It all started during the initial discovery of Ballast by Expeditionary Forces working for the UEG colonization effort in the late 2400s. Under the orders of the United Earth Government's Exoplanetary Expansion Committee, the Colonial Administrative Authority dispatched a reconnaissance probe into the Daedalus system in March of 2491. The satellite found that at least two of the system's planets lay within the habitable zone; Daedalus b and c. Daedalus b was of particular interest due to magnetospheric measurements. In 2492, the first UEG ship entered the planet's atmosphere, the UEG Pillar of Hercules. The crew's preliminary surveys of the surface found its ecosystems as well as oxygen and nitrogen levels to match the base prerequisites for the Maslow-Marshall Ecological Index. According to those same reports filed back to the expansionary committee, the planet was unusually suitable for human habitation. In fact, its general climate was compared to Earth's early Miocene period due to the unusually high similarities."

Bang.

Strawson shut his eyes tight and continued.

"However, before the ship reached the ground to commence more thorough surveys, something unexpected happened. According to the reports, the communications officer onboard received a highly encoded signal from an unknown source on the planet. The signal itself was so complex in its nature and enigmatic in origin that no one was able to discern its meaning. There were attempts made to run a transcript through cyphers for the most complex coding languages, from Malbolge all the way down to Whitespace. Nothing cohesive came out of it. It was at first brushed off as a malfunction on the Hercules' transmission systems. The captain later blamed it on atmospheric conditions...even though the ship's meteorological records showed that the weather that day was utterly clear. The signal was never received again. However-"

BANG.

"...However, agents of the Office of Naval Intelligence later requested the Pillar of Hercules' transmission records in late 2492. They took a copy of the encrypted signal before erasing any traces of it in the ship's original database."

BANG.

"While the first settlements were being established on Daedalus b, which the CAA would later officially add to the colony-catalogue under the name of 'Ballast', ONI began working on triangulating the signal rather than deciphering it. They eventually managed to pinpoint its origins to an area on Ballast' surface far removed from any of the rising colonial points of interest. The Office quickly used its influence in the UEG to secretly authorize a 40-million square kilometer exclusion zone around the origin. It was purposed to prevent any colonization charters from being granted anywhere near the area. Essentially under a quarter of the planet's real estate belonged-...still belongs to ONI, all because of this one spot. Elements of Section III quickly moved to the site and began a secret excavation project to uncover what they gradually learned to be the signal's subterranean source."

BANG!

"But by then the United Earth Government had started showing concerns for the Office's rising influence, both on Earth and throughout the developing colonies. They began taking legislative actions to limit that influence and prevent the agency from gaining too much control. Those included restrictions on lobbying for pieces of planets in exchange for political favors. The result was that the ONI Section III team sent to Ballast was forced to cover up their discovery, knowing that the UEG would eventually find and investigate them. Instead, the team decided to invite the UEG directly to the site by posing as bio-researchers from the Colonial Conservationist Society. They told them they were seeking to establish a nature preserve on Ballast. They were...we were 'studying' the 'vegetation' here. ONI quietly put a good word in for the site and acquired funding from local colonial officials on the planet, allowing them to establish our current location: The Kassarina Nature Preserve."

BANG!

Strawson stopped to use his sleeve to wipe away the sweat accumulating on his forehead. The space was getting awfully hot.

"It was a ruse. It still is. That said, real UEG botanical researchers were in fact sent to work here overtime. However, the head researcher in charge of the facility, who was also in fact the head of the initial ONI team, had authorized the transfer of further Section III personnel to the preserve. The transfer was inclusive of material support groups for construction staff and xenoarcheologists such as myself. We worked to excavate what ground penetrating radar found to be a subterranean structure of some shape or form directly beneath the preserve. We couldn't tell exactly what it was since whatever the object is, it seems to have a way of 'denying' radar pulses. There's no other scientific way to put it really. No matter what we tried, it stopped us from discerning any details beyond that of a massive but otherwise amorphous mass located 2.5 kilometers underground. Or so we thought. Regular attempts were made at encrypted communication with whatever we'd found in the hopes we'd get a similar response to what the Pillar of Hercules received. But there was no answer, just dead silence. We debated about what to call it exactly. We eventually settled on a name whose irony is sadly only just dawning on me. We called it 'The Sarcophagus'."

BANG!

Strawson felt his chest tighten. The sound was getting noticeably closer.

"...For several decades, the ONI facilitators worked to dig up the secrets of the Sarcophagus. But we found that it ran deeper underground than we first thought, so deep that the initial 2.5-kilometer measurement was discovered to be nothing more than the collapsed entrance tunnel to something else entirely. The structure's actual ending was only found as recently as several days prior to the arrival of Covenant forces on Ballast. The excavation staff working in the facility eventually uncovered a chamber with high walls. It also had an exceptionally large door leading to God knows where. We tried using tectonic pulses to see through it but whatever's there, whatever it's made of, it won't even register on the GPR. It remains unknown to us as to what lies on the other side. The staff had been working on a breakthrough when a Covenant Corvette descended on the facility."

BANG!

"I don't think I need to explain the noise. The measly security force patrolling the perimeters were easily overrun. The assault group were comprised of Jackals, Grunts and a surprising number of Brutes. Moreover, we encountered elites wearing special armor, the likes of which I've never seen. It was extremely ornate. Red or crimson. They easily found their way down into the Sarcophagus' upper levels. An emergency shutdown of most of the electronic systems was performed by the facility's resident AI before it conducted a Cole Protocol erasing of all information held within its own databases and that of the facility. I managed to-"

BANG!

"I managed to copy most of the data onto this device. I have it in case it can be saved for future reference, if we can be saved. Don't worry though. It's taking an active measure of my biometrics every second so that if I die, it will automatically erase everything pertaining to the Sarcophagus aside from this message. Minutes after the Covenant's arrival, I myself and a few of the surviving staff were forced to retreat when the Elites broke into the main observation building." He paused at the fresh memories and the fresh emotional scars they brought with them. "Many of the researchers, my associates, were killed. However, I myself and several others managed to escape with the help of an ONI agent from Section 0. She'd been sent to the facility several months prior as part of an intervention order by Admiral Parangosky herself, believe it or not. Of the information I'm allowed to give, she was to act as a precaution to ensure that all information and data gathered about the Sarcophagus was being shared with the heads of ONI. Basically, she was the honesty patrol. She kept the Elites at bay long enough to engage this part of the facility's manual lockdown protocol. We escaped down a maintenance hatch that led further down into the Sarcophagus. We'd only gotten to within reach of the newly discovered chamber when the emergency doors engaged, shutting us just outside of it. As you can tell-"

BANG!

"We were followed." He looked around in the blackness. "At current, the facility's lights are out. I and several other Sec III personnel are waiting while our agent works to override the lockdown. The plan is to get us into the safety of the chamber and to hold out there. Hopefully someone will pick up on our beacon and come to our rescue soon. Hopefully."

BANG!

He licked his drying lips as he thought about one more thing he could say. The image of his wife and daughter back on Earth came to mind. The nagging sense of reality bearing down on him forced the words out of his mouth. "And Amy, Amanda, I want you to be strong for me, okay? I want you to know..." He struggled to hold back the beginnings of tears. "I want you to know that I love you both. I'm proud of you both. So, stay strong for me Amy, and Amanda, you too. And try not to cook when your mom's not around, okay kiddo? You know how she can be. Save it for when you can do it together, like we did when I was..." The burning behind his eyes threatened to overwhelm him. The first few sobs made his frame quake. After a sharp inhalation, he pulled himself back together. "I love you two, and I don't want you to ever forget that, okay? Never."

He thumbed down on the record button, ending the audio-log.

He sat there holding back his creeping sadness. He hoped to the high heavens that the recording hadn't picked up on his crying too.

The darkness spoke. "You know ONI will never let them hear that, right?"

It was female, and by its general direction he knew it had come from the other side of the passageway, from someone whose discouraging tenor was always recognizable to him. His one wish was that his associate and friend would be more sympathetic and less calculating in times such as these. Apparently not.

"Especially after you just mentioned Section 0 out loud?" She added. "And that's not even taking into account if they ever find us, and if the UNSC hasn't lost already."

He turned the pad in her direction. The light of the screen peeled away the width of the dirt floor from the darkness. Sitting against the same type of featureless wall he was, the figure of his fellow researcher was illuminated. She wore a white lab-coat browned on various parts by the dirt. Her black boots had a polished shine to them that batted away the light. Her Turkic-Slavic features were brought out with her long dark hair that was tied into a bun at the back of her head, high cheekbones and olive brown skin. The skin was partly wrinkled by an age approaching 50. They wrinkled more at the brows as her eyes narrowed, their blue pupils dilating in the light. She held out a hand in front of her, pushing up her glasses with the other.

"Would you mind not shining that directly into my face please?"

Strawson pretended not to hear her for a few seconds before lowering the pad. "I guess you want to send a message to someone too?"

He faintly saw her shake her head. "No."

"You sure? What about the folks back home? Don't you want to say anything just in case?"

She shook her head again.

"Not Lasz...not...Sára?"

He flinched as he saw her suddenly perk up. With or without the light, he could pick up on her hard stare and her desire to tell him to shut up. It was almost palpable. He raised his hands in a 'backing off' gesture. Elicia stared at him a moment longer then pulled her legs in close. She closed her eyes, wrapped her arms around her knees and lay her head on her chest.

Strawson stayed quiet. He knew he'd touched a nerve with that last one and decided to leave her alone.

"Hey, how about this?" Another female voice called, sounding far more focused than Elicia's. "Since you're done with that report, bring that pad over here. I could use the light."

He turned the pad leftward in the voice's direction. The light panned across the length of the passage, stopping at a pair of boots. Unlike Elicia's, these were darker and more caked with dirt, more militaristic. Next to them lay a helmet with a bluish-gray color and a crescent shaped visor possessing a golden tint. He pulled the pad up along the crouched form, revealing a battle dress uniform of the same color as the helmet. The light stopped at the head of the woman in the armor. She was visibly Mediterranean in appearance, dark hair like Elicia's but much smoother, tied into a bun at the back but complemented with bangs at the front. Less like his paler tone, she was closer to Elicia's olive shade and markedly younger, probably in her early 30s. She was crouched in front of an open access panel, the very same one that controlled the emergency door standing between them and the chamber. Her hands pinched at a pair of wires that she was attempting to knit together from the dozens of others she'd already worked on. The copper ends made contact but didn't spark. She pulled them away from each other, sighing in defeat.

"Check that, we could use the light. At this rate..."

He eyed the silhouettes of the two M7 pistols strapped to either of her thigh bracers as well as the M7 submachine gun resting on her magnetic back harness. "Can't you just protect us from here? You've got more than enough to-"

BANG!

Their attention shot to the door on the other end of the passage. The pad's light reflected off the old, metallic but mostly intact surface. Moving the device in that direction revealed the four other researchers sitting against the walls. They too were haggard and exhausted looking. Their attention was altogether fixed to the door. Seconds passed with no further sound, and thankfully, no signs of deformations or glowing spots of high-intensity heat.

They let out a collective sigh.

"Strawson."

He turned back to the ONI agent who still had her hands deep in the panel. She nodded to the jumble of wires within. "Come here, I need your help with this."

Strawson laughed under his breath. "With all due respect, Lieutenant Commander, I am a xenoarcheologist, not a technician. Besides, like I said before, doesn't it make more sense if we hold our ground here rather than wasting our energies on that panel?"

"The thing is," The LC replied, peering back over her shoulder at the other door. "This place is basically a straight firing lane. We have no cover, you all don't have any weapons training and I won't have longer than a heartbeat after they get in here before they zero in on me. Once that happens, it's over. At least in that chamber there's more cover. That means a higher chance we survive this. You understand that?"

Strawson gave a reluctant nod.

"Right, now help me with this."

Strawson shrugged as he got up. "Like I said, I'm not-"

"I don't need a technician." She retorted and held out the set of wires she was working on. "I just need an extra pair of hands to hold these while I work. I know they don't do much other than type but can you lend me yours please?"

The doctor kept his mouth shut as he made his way over, quietly navigating each step across the path until he was able to crouch down at her side. She passed him the blue and red colored wires she was using. He held them in place while she got to work connecting their copper innards.

BANG!

The impact echoed through their part of the passage. It was much closer than all the others that came before. Strawson forced himself to ignore it as much closer impacts sounded off at his back. He continued to hold one dual-colored wire pair for the LC after another. He quietly accepted that his life and the life of everyone else now depended on each consecutive spark that lit up the suffocating darkness around him, and ahead of him, exposed, if only for the briefest moment, the doors to the unknown.

Sarcophagum - Sarcophagus